


Idle Spectre Walks into a Convenience Store

by odoridango



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Introspection, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29170440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: "KNIFE FOR YOU AND FAMILY."Videographer and editor Shirogane Takashi returns to his hometown to shoot a series of commercials with an instafamous chef. In truth, he just wants to learn more about their odd connection.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 23
Collections: Sheithmark 2021





	Idle Spectre Walks into a Convenience Store

**Author's Note:**

> the most MASSIVE OF THANKS to my lovely collaborator @[engraved](https://twitter.com/engraved10) without whom this story really wouldn't be what it was and is the most amazing cheerleader and just [LOOK AT THIS AMAZING ART BEAUTY](https://twitter.com/engraved10/status/1356827772249755650).

_� 00:00:10_

Birdsong, the rustle of wind. 

Leaves gone golden swirl on the dirt path, dancing. 

Dazzling light brims on the horizon, throws shadows, spills pastels and dusky blues and purples across the sky. All is surrounded by the endless, gentle roll of mountains, still lush and brimming, the emerald green of spring flush tea just splashed awake. The fragrance of grassy meadows rises and curls tentatively into the air. 

The distant sound of a windchime, the click-click-whirr of bikes zooming by, the come-and-go doppler of their riders’ laughter going from one ear to the next. 

_I have lived here_ , says the voice, close and claustrophobic, underlying rasp sharpening straight into the ringing scrape of a knife on a whetstone, _for a long, long time._

⭗ _excursion_

It takes only a few seconds. With a loud booming noise, the car sputters, jerks, and performs a tight swerve, swiftly careening across double-lines into the incoming right lane, where an average black sedan is still barreling forward.

 _Oh_ , he thinks. _This is it._

Instead of stalling like he expects, the car shoots straight off the road, rolling down the dirt bank into tall, swaying grasses, front bumper first. The sedan passes leisurely by as he immediately scrabbles to turn off the ignition, breathing fast. Whoever the driver is, they don’t bother to stop or roll down the window to check on him. Clutched tight around the steering wheel, his hands tremble, the carbon fiber plating of his prosthesis making a muted clattering sound.

He got lucky, on this country road. On a busy city street, he surely would have been hit. He stares blankly at the hood of the car, molding his back to the driver’s seat, running the count in his head to slow his breaths, the way therapy taught him. It was a bad idea to drive so far and so long, it was a bad idea to drive at all. He could’ve asked someone to drive him on this first trip back, or taken the shinkansen. But stubbornly, he’d wanted this trip to be for his eyes and lens only, his way of burning the resolution of this final venture into his brain. Private and personal, like all his other travels in these past months. He didn't want anyone with him then, and he doesn’t want anyone with him now. He’d rationalized it all away: transporting the range of recording and lighting equipment he’d need to test would be easier and safer with a car, and if he ended up needing to travel to different sites for footage, having a personal transport option with storage and space for more people would be vastly more convenient than waiting for an empty rail car. 

People used to tell him, and sometimes still do, to take advantage of his accumulated holiday hours, to get out more. Like it would be a waste not to. Like his life would be a waste, if he spent it only in one place. He travels on weekends, during Golden Week, even during the run-up to New Year’s since there’s no one left to eat osechi with. Yokohama, Hakone, Shizuoka, Kanazawa, then further afield to Kushiro, revisiting Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara, and getting closer to home with Fukuoka and Arita. Some cities are familiar from his photography work at music festivals, but it simply means more time to discover backroads, to wander further from the tourist traps and map an unhurried, languorous path that could cross right into someone’s daily life. Sometimes he doesn’t even go to any particular destination, just spends his days walking through the streets, looking for interesting corners and personable architecture.

He knows beauty when he sees it, through a viewfinder or a digital screen, or in its early stages sketched out in storyboards. He knows the importance of timing, the way microseconds can stretch out, how just a couple more frames can make a difference. On every trip he practices these skills, dutifully takes pictures, edits them, records footage and tests out new storytelling and editing techniques, idly wondering if any of the test reels should be added to his portfolio. But there’s no sense of awe or wonder, no gratefulness of place or feeling. He goes, he sees, he captures, he manipulates, he reviews. He thinks, _That was nice_ , or _I’ve never seen anything like that before_. He thinks a lot about his creative inspirations, his process, and what he wants to make next. He’s better off for the consistency of the exercise, but he’s always done that. He’s always thinking. For all his travel he’s not any better or worse off, hasn’t had any sudden epiphanies about his life’s journey, hasn’t had a change of heart. 

Yet the trips have continued anyway, because the thing he thinks he likes is the sensation of traveling. In between here and there he exists, thoughtlessly, a single distilled point among the infinite amount that together create a line. Travel assumes a destination, even if not final. He finds that comforting, the lull of watching scenery fly by his window as the shinkansen hums its whispering white noise purr, the perfect coordination in the simultaneous sway of drop grips as the JR railcar rounds a corner, the sense of anticipation in his steps when he approaches an entranceway, and the feeling of suspension as he passes exit after exit, steering wheel firm under his hand. He likes the feeling of going somewhere. For now though, he’s been stopped, and it’s time to put his dusty mechanical engineering skills to work. His knees wobble, liquid, when he steps from the car.

As he suspected, it’s a blown tire. There’s enough of an incline to the bank for him to drive back onto the road, but the timing and oncoming traffic could make it a problem. He laughs tiredly, breath driven from his lungs again as he strains against the car’s rear bumper, pushing the vehicle centimeter by agonizing centimeter onto flatter grounds. 

It’s October and the kami are gone from the land, but even Ebisu, who remains, cannot bring him luck or fortune. Just another thing to be fished up, worn, from the sea. 

⎕ _YYYY/MM/DD_

 _Hi.  
_ _I saw the Full of Motion video in your portfolio and liked it a lot. Maybe this is weird, but do you know the Shirogane family that lives in Jinkichi?_

⭗ _i’m off, i’ll see you_

Pampas grass at the front door, five plumes tied together with a red ribbon. Dirt and gravel shower down in a thin sheet when he lifts the skinny bundle from the dirt. Shriveled, yellowed florets snap off and drift down to dust the tops of his shoes, sundried and dead after weeks of exposure to the elements. Powdery gray residue comes away on his fingers, packing into the barely visible grooves of his fingerprints. Rub the tips of the fingers together, watch the remnants disintegrate. No way that incense ash would have lingered so long, not with the wind and sun, but even so, Takashi’s mind insists – someone remembered his family here. A wish for a good harvest and a ward against ayakashi both, and Takashi appreciates the sentiment, even if it feels too little too late. His family has already been plucked from the mortal coil and returned to the earth, and when he determinedly looks, dead ahead, at the world before his eyes, a kingdom of mirages fills in the margins, wavering, indefinite shadows glinting in the periphery, causing headaches and dissipating like fog when he turns to place them in his sights. More recently these shades have taken shape, stretching out limbs, exercising disjointedly expressive faces, sometimes revealing themselves to simply be odd phenomena, landmarks, strangely colored animals, and spirit-like beings that no one else seems to be able to see.

He didn’t visit the family grave at Obon again this year, the second time in a row. The most important trip, the only truly personal one, and he’d missed it. Stuck in the hospital. Stuck. Released a week and a half later to give stale apologies and refresh the offerings in the ramshackle altar he’d made himself, like a child’s elementary school project, his parents’ and grandparents’ smiling faces staring at him as he’d belatedly cleaned the picture frames, sat ramrod straight in seiza to watch unmoving eyes become obscured by rising smoke, the ash of his paltry prayers. Too little, too late.

Still. The pampas grass is a meaningful sign of anonymous regard, carefully presented. Takashi wonders if he’ll ever find out who did this. His grandparents had their friends, their business connections, their acquaintances, but in a small town like this, everyone knows each other while also knowing nothing. It isn’t personal. He’d like to extend his thanks anyway.

His keyring is so worn the matte black finish has mostly scraped off, revealing the silver of steel beneath. There are at least five different keys threaded onto it, crowded enough that there’s barely any noise as Takashi sorts through them to find the one with the diamond-shaped head, patterned with cartoon illustrations of a day in the life of a chubby, lethargic calico cat. He uses a plastic cylindrical rod to first depress the divot at the bottom of the sliding door, undoing the safety latch, before putting the cat key to good use. The door groans as it slides open, spilling waning sunset light onto dusty wooden floorboards. 

It’s dark inside the house like he expects, all the blinds turned down with the curtains drawn. The glow of approaching dusk outlines the edges of windows and illuminates the numerous motes of dust twisting, suspended, through the air. Camera bag resting safely against his hip, he wheels his large, well-worn suitcase across the unpolished concrete walk-up, the noisy rattling of the plastic wheels immediately swallowed by the oppressive silence that has taken up residence in Takashi’s absence. Every sound he makes crashes crassly against his ears, fried and flat. Large pen-scratched sound effects scribble across his mind as he toes off his shoes, _tosu_ , beat up canvas sneakers dropping haphazardly to the floor, _ton_ , heavy backpack coming to rest against the wall on the lightly scratched hardwood step of the genkan, _gata_ , the door of the wooden shoe cupboard clattering open to find, unseeing, his grandparents’ shoes still all lined up in a row like soldiers, his own fluffy winter slippers tucked in sideways, near the back. An afterthought, just so. _Shi_ – _n_ , the unnerving quiet responds, as he stares at the still-clean cream of the pile lining. From the other end of the genkan, a framed work of his grandmother’s peers down at him.

The protective wrap of the slippers crinkles under his tightening grip as he studies his grandmother’s hand; soaks it in with bittersweet familiarity. It’s not calligraphy, not entirely, more like the brushwork games and control exercises she used to play with him as a child. Few of her trademarks are present on the paper, no signs of her famed water control, no nuanced strokes or playful flicks of ink. Instead, the sigil that greets every visitor at the door is stark and made bold by a saturated brush, formed with graceful loops and trailing lines, punctuated by curlicues and odd pictographs that look like eyes, celestial signs. It’s the same unknown language that she sometimes practiced at home, that his mother taught him to draw on his good luck charms, the same charms he continues to write every few weeks to end up in his back pocket, protected by a rectangular plastic sliding case, the kind used for cell phone charms. _Plumbing the divide between symbol and language_ , was what they sometimes said about his grandmother’s work.

He throws his slippers down onto the elevated hardwood step of the genkan, teeth grinding together. _Pashi_ , this sound too, is muted by the house. The strap of his camera bag digs into his shoulder and he stomps the rest of the way toward his grandmother’s sigil work, the dim light coming in from the frosted glass of the front door barely enough to help him make his way. He turns right towards the living room, office, and studio; toward the electrical switch hidden in a metal hallway panel that will be the first step towards breathing some life back into the walls. Red plastic flicks into place with a weighty thunk, and he huffs to himself as he walks back towards the kitchen, pausing by the genkan entrance to finally turn on the wall sconces and push the dimmer to max output. 

There’s plenty for him to do before he sleeps tonight, and he’s got just enough time to do it. Windows are thrown open and blinds rotated to let light in; the curtains dusted down. The air begins to smell like citrus and alcohol as he wipes down the wooden dining table, the countertops, and runs the faucet to check that the water flow is clear. He plugs in the microwave, then the aqua-colored retro-looking refrigerator that his grandfather bought four years ago; the mechanical hum following him as he sets up the rest of the kitchen and dining room. He runs out to the car to bring in the product for the shoot and puts it away; wheels in all the equipment he brought with him to fill up the dining room space. Out comes dish detergent and a new sponge, out comes the baking soda and an old toothbrush and he gives the sink a quick scrubdown before moving to the toilet room. He’ll have to take care of the second floor unit bath and toilet room before he can wash tonight, and he groans as he hauls more cleaning supplies out of the hallway closet, thanking the foresight of his past self as he trudges upstairs. 

He’ll not rattle any bones today; the living room will go untouched and undisturbed, and along with it, the uncovered family altar sitting forlorn in a shadowed corner, more of his grandmother’s sigil work hanging above it. Photographs of his grandparents are still in his luggage, brought back from his Tokyo apartment. Their memorial tablets he left behind in this house. 

He’s forgotten what it’s like to live here, how different it can be from his western-style, eight-jou 1DK mansion apartment. A combination of shoji, plaster walls, and varnished wood imbued with memories of childhood and summer vacations past; the weave of tatami underneath his fingers mesmerizing as he does a quick wipedown with vinegar and a dry cloth, so different from the artificial texturing of vinyl tile made to look like wood. Most of the bedrooms are on the second floor, but all through high school and college he’d taken the only room on the first floor, tucked right behind the office, abutting his grandmother’s studio, one shoji to separate him from the wild backyard. He remembers waking to filtered sunlight on his face, sliding the shoji open to a fresh morning breeze, the twittering of birds, and his grandmother’s guffaw from where she sat on the engawa with a cup of coffee, laughing at his bedhead. So close to the kitchen, he’d sometimes wake to the presence of others, the clink of bowls and murmur of indistinct conversation, the soft thump-creak of the refrigerator door and the occasional loud slam of a cabinet and the reprimanding hiss soon to come after. It was comforting to him to wake that way, rather than annoying. In Tokyo, it’s the crash of his neighbors running out the door, the beep of the garbage truck, the sudden anxiety of whether or not he’s forgotten to take out the burnables.

When he rolls out the futon and the bedding from their resting place in the closet, small sachets of cedar and lavender fall out, emitting a faint fragrance. His arms still, fingers sinking in the softened denseness of the cotton kakefuton. He hasn’t slept in this room, in this house, for years. Even during the funeral, he didn’t dare to stay. The homely scents and solid, plush pushback of thick quilt under his left palm fling him back to fourteen, determinedly setting up his own bed despite the lingering feeling of lopsidedness, of absence, from a months-old transhumeral amputation. Returned to Jinkichi for the last half of his final middle school year, he’d frequently left his body-powered prosthesis off at home, the harnesses rubbing painful blisters into his sides and giving him a bad rash. By the time he’d started high school, he’d abandoned the prosthesis entirely, shoving appearances aside in favor of daily comfort. Laying out and putting away his futon and bedding on his own every day had been a point of pride for him, and he still associates that odd cedar-and-lavender smell with a tired contentment, the kind that arrives at the end of a long day. He’s never been able to replicate the smell, not with incense or room diffusers. The cedar had been scraps from his Grandpa’s woodworking projects, the lavender gathered from the wild growths that dotted the grounds, and his grandparents had swapped out the sachets near the end of the year, during new year’s cleaning. It’s a horribly considerate, terribly detailed, careful and mundane protection his grandparents have left him, their stupid grandson who had not properly returned to see them in years. And it’s wholly effective. Everything, even the woolen blanket, the soft and fancy yak throw, is close to pristine, musty from disuse but unbothered by enterprising waxwings, moths, and beetles. Weather permitting, he might be able to air everything out in the sun tomorrow. 

Hunching over the small, sturdy wooden foldout table, he eats his conbini dinner sitting right on top of his futon, not bothering to try on the freshly cleaned kitchen and dining room, too large and alien for him alone. A lone black sesame seed stares at him from where it is embedded in the last, too-dry clump of rice, pinched loosely between unevenly broken wooden chopsticks. The house is almost entirely as his grandparents left it, a time capsule cracked open. He really hadn’t dealt with anything before he’d gone back to Tokyo two years ago. He could carry on pretending like nothing ever happened. Carry on acting like he’d never had to pick out his grandparents bones, unmoored and a little hysterical, grasping for some sort of meaning with shaking chopsticks, as if he could find a sarira relic in their remains, a pearl of wisdom. 

But he doesn’t want to. He can’t. Lifts the rice to his lips and swallows down that sesame seed. Rustles through the bag to open a small pack of wasabi kaki peanuts so he can feel the burn of crying while barefaced. Coughs and throws the shoji open to let the moonlight in, to see the backyard doused in electric blue, full moon. The house rests some scant distance over the boundary of ancient shrine land, and he can see straight into the aged, dense forest from his room. 

There has never been any sort of formal property line, fence, or border, and no one has ever bothered bringing it up aside from Uncle Hiroto, in and of itself a statement of how much historical regard the Shirogane family has given toward the idea of a land claim. Before his grandparents had decided to settle in the countryside, no one from the clan had lived in Jinkichi for decades. Proximity to the shrine spoke clearly to the connections and influence the Shirogane clan had once wielded as noble patrons of the village, but land ownership couldn’t negate the vague shame of exile. The old grounds had been so dilapidated, it was a necessity for his grandparents to gather funds to remodel and rebuild from the ground up, to create the house that Takashi now lodges in, one that could accommodate a more comfortable, modern lifestyle. 

Strategically planted bushes hide the sightlines, shielding the engawa, and all the windows and doors lock and have theft-proof latches. Otherwise, the house remains private mostly by virtue of its location, accessible primarily by the same overgrown dirt paths that weave and wend all throughout the forest, up towards the mountains and the natural springs, the lifelines of what used to be the heart of Jinkichi. At the center, the shrine to the Five Heavenly Guardians still stands, diminished. Modern Jinkichi has moved at least a twenty minute bike ride southeast, and most hikers take the more established, direct mountain trails that boast a parking lot and restrooms at their foot. But no homegrown villager would ever forget the patron kami of these lands, the small shrines sprinkled along the roads, the mountain paths, the rivers and the streams. It may be said that humans and kami have the same type of spirit, but who are they to dictate the place and territory of the kami who ensure the richness of the earth, the purity of natural waters, the solidity of the rock beneath their feet, the Five Guardians that descended from the heavenly plain in a strike so fierce that the earth surged up to create the mountains in response, the same mountains that shielded Jinkichi from military strife for so much of history? 

So it is that the only marker between the land of kami and the Shirogane house is a small, unofficial shrine, unblessed and unsanctioned, made by family hands. In a show of neutrality, the shrine faces neither the house nor the forest, but the new village center, turned at a sharp right angle. Affixed to a tall, stone plinth assembled from various rocks, parts of it are renovated piecemeal based on age, need, and Shirogane whim, but rarely does the shrine go entirely unattended. At least, it hadn’t when Takashi’s grandparents were alive. He intends to make up for the absence, marching across yellowing grass on bare feet, plastic cup and unopened bottle of junmai ginjo sake in one hand, a can of plum chuuhai in the other. The unexpected catch of moonlight around the shining white lip of a porcelain cup has him slowing his advance, already placed front and center before the shrine on the small, elevated platform for offerings. Inside, clear liquid fills the cup almost to the brim, its bottom cradling prominent specks of dirt, twig bits, and pieces of dry leaf, two browned flower petals plastered more than floating on the liquid surface. 

First the pampas grass, now this. Uneasiness roiling in his too-full stomach, Takashi looks around the empty yard, then into the forest. With no wind, the trees don’t even rustle back. Grabbing the cup, he dips his fingers into what he assumes is weeks old sake, sprinkling the droplets over the offering platform in tribute, before pouring the sake out on the land directly before the shrine. Family tradition says that this land belongs to the kami and Takashi does not at all disagree – it’s hard to forget the heaviness of the air here, the way it transmits an unspoken presence and latency, soaked full of possibility and anticipation. But that doesn’t banish the sense of intrusion that jabs him right between the ribs and wrinkles his brow, the possessive seethe of guilt, indignation, and relief all rolled up together, almost indistinguishable. Frowning, he settles the cup back on its perch before cracking the seal on his bottle of sake, and topping it up. When he pops the tab on the can of chuuhai, the alcohol sprays out and dribbles all over his fingers, and he hisses and licks it off as quickly as possible, trying to keep the spillover from reaching his electrostim bracelet, or flowing in between his finger joints. The can is left on the small shrine platform. 

Head empty, no prayers to make, he simply stands there with a mostly full sake bottle and plastic cup in hand. The Five Heavenly Guardians might be local kami but their purview primarily extends over the land, agriculture, natural disasters, resources, and the like. Not the kami one would pray to specifically for human worries like high school exams, bullish stock markets, or landing a position as a salaryman in a prestigious company. Even then, Takashi has always felt that kami are estranged from the everyday, lacking the constancy of the mundane. He doesn’t _not_ believe in them, but the kami are not everpresent. The feeling of in-betweenness, crouching apprehension, the sensation of something undefined peering, undetected, over his shoulder, both there and not-there, is so much more of a looming presence in his life. He is unnervingly intimate with knowing that he does not know. He has lived with it. He is sick with it. The idea of ayakashi and youkai has walked in lockstep with him from a childhood in the countryside to an adolescence in the city and back again, and it haunts his shadow still, becoming clearer everyday. In Tokyo the air is noticeably denser, more complex, like a heavyweight winter jacket settling across his shoulders, another facet of its metropolitan character, the aftertaste of tens of millions of lives teeming within artificial city limits. He’s never hated it, but it is heavy, thought-provoking, undeniable and indeterminable, a flavor he’ll probably never really understand or be able to describe in his lifetime.

The dry grass stabs into his bare feet uncomfortably. He takes in a deep lungful of the clear, crisp, mountain air, laced with the faintly pleasing scent of wet earth and vegetation from the Guardians’ forest territory, its entrance some steps away. Only in places like this do the solidity and ubiquity of the kami become apparent, where the ground is soaked and imbued with their power, filtered into the very atoms of the atmosphere with the strength of legend, common knowledge, and adherents’ belief. From here he can see straight into his brightly lit room, warm with incandescent ceiling lighting, futon unrolled and beckoning, luggage unzipped with his toiletries bag resting on top. Next door, his grandmother’s studio is still and silent, forbidding and lifeless with its closed shoji, the wooden frame and grid reminding Takashi of fence grating. 

He bows to the backyard border shrine twice. The sake he spilled should have been too old to smell, but the sharpness of alcohol still cuts through, drifting through nose and mouth to scratch at his throat like a persistent stray at the door. Artificial plum intensifies on his tongue, sour and sweet. When he claps, his bracelets beep out of time, and he keeps his mind empty as he gives the final bow. He doesn’t _not_ believe in the kami, it’s that they can’t reach him. He is not rooted in the land, in the village or the mountains, work and play have him traversing highways, cities, prefectures, and nations capturing frame after frame, digital or print. Tokyo does not have a shrine to the Five Heavenly Guardians; Tokyo does not have his grandmother’s studio. Tokyo has the old kitchen window that screams every time he hauls it open, the balcony screen door with a hole in the netting that he’s duct-taped shut, a plywood hinge door that swings open, and the corner he’s curated with his shitty excuse for an altar, a sculpturally minimalistic incense burner and the neat, stepped photo stand, offerings swapped out every other week. 

In his back pocket, his phone vibrates. _Hope you had a safe trip. See you tomorrow?_ the LINE notification reads. A thought, a hunch, burrows into his mind, has his thumbs hovering over the keypad as the screen goes dark. It can’t be more than a coincidence, but it’s not too farfetched, considering why he’s here.

 _Thanks! Made it back in one piece,_ he types slowly, phone humming with each tap of his fingers, responding, even if only programmed to do so. _Yes, see you tomorrow. Looking forward to it._

Tap send. His response loads in a blank, white bubble, and he clicks the screen off instead of waiting for it to time out. Multicolored spots dance before his eyes from the abrupt change in brightness, but lifting his head to the sky relieves him. Out here in the countryside exists a perfect dark that swallows everything, encompassing and opaque, untouched by midnight neon and the unceasing movement of taxis and trains. The moon glows, serene in comparison to the stars spilled and splattered haphazardly every which way, twinkling. Clean mountain air curls smoothly in his lungs, smoke and tar. 

⎕ _refinancing_

“Hey, Takashi-kun, it’s been a while!”

“What do you mean, we just got dinner a couple weeks ago! I still can’t believe you snuck off to pay the bill like that, after I was the one to ask you all out, too...”

“Haha, is that still bothering you? Don’t mind things like that so much. I’m your elder, shouldn’t I take care of you? We’re family, anyway.”

“Uncle Hiroto, I’m already over twenty-five years old.”

“Still younger than me, Takashi-kun. How are you? Are you feeling better? Yukiko-san and Sayuri were really worried about you, all they talked about on the way home was how pale and skinny they thought you were. If you really want to, you can blame the bill payment on them, they wanted to make sure you’d eat your fill!”

“Oh...I appreciate the concern. I’d mostly recovered by the time I met you all for dinner, actually. Any of the residual symptoms faded in the week afterward. So I’m all good now. Basically at one hundred percent.”

“Ahh, that’s really good, that’s great. They’ll be happy to hear that. Sayuri’s actually been practicing cooking more recently and she was saying that she wanted to make a pot for you too. Do you prefer cream or tendon stew?”

“...I wouldn’t want to impose. She doesn’t have much spare time as a manga assistant. I was happy enough to see her at the dinner, and I’ve already troubled everyone during Obon. To miss grave cleaning once is one thing, but twice in a row is a little –”

“Takashi-kun. Sayuri volunteered, and she manages her own time. You aren’t any trouble, not at all. In fact, I don’t think any of us would mind if you imposed on us a little more. Again, we’re family, so like I said, don’t mind things like this so much. You’re not missing Bon on purpose. Mom and Dad, Emi and Shintarou-san, they’d all understand. We know your circumstances, you can’t help being in the hospital. And you’re still young, you should be enjoying life out here in the city. Make connections, explore. Being in the metro is kind of a luxury, not everyone can be here, I know both of us know that. So take advantage of it.”

“I suppose so. I just haven’t gone back in so long. Not even to check on the house.” 

“Frankly speaking, I didn’t expect you to. A countryside village like Jinkichi can’t offer too much for a person your age. All the work, all the opportunity is in places like Tokyo. I can’t say any of us expected you to end up in video production or the creative industry, what with your university studies, but from what I understand, it’s a tough, self-driven business. You’re busy doing well for yourself. When I said I would leave the house to you, I didn’t mean for you to feel tied down, by any means. Just think about what _you_ want to do. I have a lot of good memories of that house, but my life is here now. Most of the time I’m just grateful to have work. Emi, Yuriko-san, and me, any of us could have fallen into the black hole of the Lost Decade. There’s no use dwelling on the past though, so when Mom and Dad passed, I thought it would be better for you to have the house as an asset. If you want to sell the house, or try and find a renter, I’m happy to help you arrange the listings and find a realtor, too. You don’t have to consider me in your plans.”

“I called because of the house, actually. My next assignment’s in Jinkichi so I figured I’d stay there while I work, and finally do that deep clean while I’m at it. I know we already sorted through the house once after the funeral for things that needed to go in the safety deposit box, but I wanted to ask if there’s anything I should keep an eye out for, or I don’t know, if there’s something you left there that you want me to bring back. ” 

“In Jinkichi?! ...That’s surprising. Well, you’ll definitely be more comfortable in the house. Good thing Mom went and updated the WiFi for her commissions those years back, eh? Some days I feel like it's even faster than the service we get here. Hm...the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the writing box Mom always kept in her studio. Calligraphy and literature was always more of Emi’s passion, and I can’t even tell a good inkstone from a bad one. I thought it would be better if you handled the studio and the office, you’d actually know what you were looking through. You didn’t find it the first time we went through the house?”

“...I didn’t go through the house in earnest then. I didn’t want to stay there too long. Mostly I looked out for things that had been mentioned or shown to me before, or for basics like their official and artist’s seals. I didn’t even know Grandma had a writing box. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in her studio, she always just picked her brushes and inks from that wooden equipment drawer she had.” 

“Dad made that drawer for her on one of their anniversaries because she couldn’t find the sort of storage she wanted. A writing box wouldn’t have been large enough to contain all her supplies. But the one I’m talking about is special. The wider clan likes to say that we’re descended from Fujiwara no Teika, right, that we’re a distantly removed branch of the Reizei family? That writing box is supposed to be one of the family heirlooms that proves it. The inside of the lid has an inscription of a waka poem written by Abutsu-ni addressed to Fujiwara no Tamesuke, including her seal. Since Mom was making a splash in the calligraphy world so early, the clan head gifted it to her as a way of asking her to help revive the progressive reputation of the family. But then, well, she started seeing Dad, and then she married him, and you know how the rest went. The rest of the clan is still annoyed that she has it.”

“That’s….something like that has just been sitting in her studio this whole time?! Shouldn’t it be in a museum, or kept in a place that has temperature and humidity control? It’s basically a relic!”

“Mom was really smug about still having it. Seems it’s a point of pride for the clan to have the writing box continually in use, passed down to the most promising calligrapher of every generation. She said it was fitting that she didn’t have a use for it, and that it ended up with her outside the family. The writing box has been restored many times already, but the cost of preservation would have been too high for us. I think she thought of it as a form of emergency money, if we ever had financial trouble.”

“Sounds like classic Grandma.”

“I was shocked the first time she told Emi and me the whole story. The writing box has never been assessed, so we don’t know if it's authentic or not. I think the clan was too worried it would turn out to be a fake, and Mom didn’t put much stake in the legitimacy of the clan lineage in the first place. Regardless, it’s still a great piece of old lacquerware craftsmanship and could command a hefty resale price.” 

“I better find it, then. What does it look like?”

“I only saw it five times at the most. If I remember correctly, the outer box had a shippo pattern background with fans all over it, and the writing box itself was black, with the Four Gentlemen drawn in gold and red on the lid. Aside from that, I can't think of anything else of note. Unless you want a VHS player, or a Walkman. There might be an old Casio keyboard somewhere in the office.”

“Depending on what you do, those last two can be pretty valuable.”

“Really?! Ah, some days I feel like the world is moving too fast without me. If you find anything else you’re not sure about while you’re at the house, just ping me over LINE. Don’t feel like you have to handle everything on your own, Takashi-kun. What kind of uncle would I be then? The house is yours, and whatever you decide, we’ll support or help you, whatever you need. Now, make your choice: tendon or cream stew?” 

“...I guess I don’t eat cream stew too often.”

“Neither do we! Yuriko-san and I have our fingers crossed, Sayuri’s never made a bechamel sauce before. She said that was why she wanted to make everyone else some too, the pressure to perform makes her pay attention to every single detail or something like that.”

“That must be the constant schedule crunch talking. Hate to say it, but sounds familiar, you get obsessive over getting everything just right. And cream stew’s not so complicated. There’s always the ready-made cubes to start with.” 

“Whenever I bring it up she just says that it’s difficult, but fun because everyone’s in it together. Says it’s when they all have their best ideas. Ah, I really can’t understand it, though maybe you would, Takashi-kun. They’re both creative industries in the end, right? When it comes to cooking though, you can’t hold Sayuri to your self-sufficient bachelor standards, she’s just a beginner compared to you.”

“I can’t tell if you’re complimenting me or not.”

“It’s not a criticism! You’re very independent, so much so that you remind me of Emi sometimes. She was always moving forward, no matter how difficult things were. She’d be really proud of you, Shintarou-san too. The office...it should have first editions of their work. Mom and Dad liked to collect them.”

“...Thank you, Uncle Hiroto.”

“Now I’m the one who can’t tell if you’re complimenting me or not. It’s the truth. The older you get the more I see shades of both of them in you, even though I know your traits are your own and inheritance doesn’t work that way. I always thought it funny that Mom, Emi, and Shintarou-san all made their living through words, but your work...it’s not wordless, but you make your living through images. And whether it’s words or visuals there’s the effort to communicate emotion to a viewer who gives the work a meaning. Isn’t that strange? It’s so different but so similar.” 

“When it comes to brushwork though, the two don’t seem very different at all.” 

“Is that so? I never did have a knack for the arts. I’ll leave it to you then, Takashi-kun, haha! Have a safe trip back to Jinkichi. Call me if you need anything, okay?”

“I will. And same to you, if there’s anything you remember that you need me to bring back, just let me know.”

“Sure. Let’s get dinner again soon. One not made by Sayuri, but don’t tell her I said that.”

“I won’t. And only if you let me get the bill this time. See you again, soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> we are under construction. once complete, all chapters will be posted in full. thanks for your patience!


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